Deranged Rhino Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 (edited) Stephen Hawking to Unveil New Space Exploration Project Tuesday (today/now) Stephen Hawking will announce a mysterious new space exploration initiative Tuesday, and there's plenty of reason to think it will be a pretty big deal. There's the famed astrophysicist's involvement, for starters, as well as the project's name -- "Starshot". Furthermore, Hawking will make the announcement with billionaire entrepreneur and investor Yuri Milner, who is also bankrolling a 10-year, $100 million search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) initiative called Breakthrough Listen. Hawking was among a group of researchers who helped unveil Breakthrough Listen last July. (Milner is also funding a related project called Breakthrough Message, which will award prizes to people who help craft the best messages humanity could send to alien civilizations). That's pretty much all we know about Starshot -- the project's name and the involvement of Hawking and Milner. http://www.space.com/32537-stephen-hawking-starshot-space-exploration.html? Livestream here, starts around the 48 min mark (you can rewind) http://livestream.com/accounts/18650072/events/5143435 Edited April 12, 2016 by Deranged Rhino Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gugny Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 Just think of how much the homeless (real people) could benefit from this money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted April 12, 2016 Author Share Posted April 12, 2016 Just think of how much the homeless (real people) could benefit from this money. First, this is a privately funded enterprise (for now). But second, are you saying there are no practical benefits to investing in space exploration and technology? ... Because if you are, that's a very inaccurate position to take considering we are still reaping the benefits of the Apollo programs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 Just think of how much the homeless (real people) could benefit from this money. No kidding. Do you think there will be enough rockets built to send them all into space? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Acantha Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 No kidding. Do you think there will be enough rockets built to send them all into space? I think if you're not worrying about the return trip, it's takes away a big part of the expense. So there's potential there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Just Jack Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 No kidding. Do you think there will be enough rockets built to send them all into space? Someone has to go and be the first to settle a new planet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 Someone has to go and be the first to settle a new planet. And this will keep any aliens from getting any crazy ideas about coming here when they think these people are our best and brightest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jauronimo Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 First, this is a privately funded enterprise (for now). But second, are you saying there are no practical benefits to investing in space exploration and technology? ... Because if you are, that's a very inaccurate position to take considering we are still reaping the benefits of the Apollo programs. Theres a guy that I regularly pass on my way to the gym who lives in an alcove of a parking garage and s#@$s in a bucket and I'm always thinking to myself, "where would he be without the Apollo program? Would he even have a bucket?". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sodbuster Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 If y'all are really so worried about the homeless, I'm sure there is a shelter or soup kitchen that you could help out at rather than wasting your time on here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jauronimo Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 If y'all are really so worried about the homeless, I'm sure there is a shelter or soup kitchen that you could help out at rather than wasting your time on here. My tax dollars fund space exploration. I do plenty for the homeless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gugny Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 If y'all are really so worried about the homeless, I'm sure there is a shelter or soup kitchen that you could help out at rather than wasting your time on here. Y'all?? I reckon yer from the south? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted April 12, 2016 Author Share Posted April 12, 2016 Theres a guy that I regularly pass on my way to the gym who lives in an alcove of a parking garage and s#@$s in a bucket and I'm always thinking to myself, "where would he be without the Apollo program? Would he even have a bucket?". :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chef Jim Posted April 12, 2016 Share Posted April 12, 2016 If y'all are really so worried about the homeless, I'm sure there is a shelter or soup kitchen that you could help out at rather than wasting your time on here. Soup kitchens? Pfffft How 20th century of you. Cram 'em in a rocket and send 'em to space I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PromoTheRobot Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/starshot-project-stephen-hawking-and-mark-zuckerberg-to-send-tiny-rockets-to-alpha-centauri-in-most-a6981101.html Mission to Alpha Centauri. (Sounds like the plot of 'Lost in Space') Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bad Things Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Thanks for posting this, Rhino. It's the first I've heard of this, and it sounds very exciting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Someone has to go and be the first to settle a new planet. And they're already used to roughing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saxum Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Interesting idea but I wonder how they are going to deal with 20 years of background radiation. Hope they do not buy parts from lowest bidder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DC Tom Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Interesting idea but I wonder how they are going to deal with 20 years of background radiation. Hope they do not buy parts from lowest bidder. Shielding and redundancy. I suspect the radiation risk is lower in the interstellar medium than it is in a stellar neighborhood - cosmic rays are much more energetic than stellar (i.e. solar) radiation, but there's also far fewer of them. I'm not interested enough in that problem to actually do the calculation, though. The biggest handicap to the project is the speed of the probe - not getting it fast enough to get there, but keeping it slow enough to collect meaningful data. They're talking about 20 years to Alpha Centauri, which is about 4 light years away. If you don't have a way to slow the probe down at the destination (hint: you don't. The fuel you'd need for that delta-V is mass-prohibitive just to get off the earth, never mind carry to Alpha Centauri), you send it screaming through the system at a minimum of a fifth of the speed of light. That's fast enough to cross our entire solar system in two days. That may seem like a lot...but consider New Horizons: it had a 22-hour flyby dedicated solely to data collection (basically, went into an automatic mode and collected and stored everything it could for later transmission.) For this plan, we're talking about a data collection window a little more than twice as long for an entire solar system. What's more, that's for an entire solar system where we don't know where anything is. You can't even do the sort of mission planning it took to pull of the New Horizons mission, because you can't predict where to point the cameras. (And you can't use any sort of command guidance because, y'know, any command you send takes four years to get there.) It's analogous to me asking you to drive down a road at 300mph and read the house numbers off mailboxes, when we don't even know if there's any mailboxes on the road. And if I want to ask you to do something different while you're driving, I have to mail you a letter. It's a ridiculous engineering challenge. Probably not insoluble...but nearly so. The biggest benefit of a program like this would probably be ancillary, like how the massive investment in SDI gave us the Clementine lunar mission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deranged Rhino Posted April 13, 2016 Author Share Posted April 13, 2016 Thanks for posting this, Rhino. It's the first I've heard of this, and it sounds very exciting. Anytime. Shielding and redundancy. I suspect the radiation risk is lower in the interstellar medium than it is in a stellar neighborhood - cosmic rays are much more energetic than stellar (i.e. solar) radiation, but there's also far fewer of them. I'm not interested enough in that problem to actually do the calculation, though. The biggest handicap to the project is the speed of the probe - not getting it fast enough to get there, but keeping it slow enough to collect meaningful data. They're talking about 20 years to Alpha Centauri, which is about 4 light years away. If you don't have a way to slow the probe down at the destination (hint: you don't. The fuel you'd need for that delta-V is mass-prohibitive just to get off the earth, never mind carry to Alpha Centauri), you send it screaming through the system at a minimum of a fifth of the speed of light. That's fast enough to cross our entire solar system in two days. That may seem like a lot...but consider New Horizons: it had a 22-hour flyby dedicated solely to data collection (basically, went into an automatic mode and collected and stored everything it could for later transmission.) For this plan, we're talking about a data collection window a little more than twice as long for an entire solar system. What's more, that's for an entire solar system where we don't know where anything is. You can't even do the sort of mission planning it took to pull of the New Horizons mission, because you can't predict where to point the cameras. (And you can't use any sort of command guidance because, y'know, any command you send takes four years to get there.) It's analogous to me asking you to drive down a road at 300mph and read the house numbers off mailboxes, when we don't even know if there's any mailboxes on the road. And if I want to ask you to do something different while you're driving, I have to mail you a letter. It's a ridiculous engineering challenge. Probably not insoluble...but nearly so. The biggest benefit of a program like this would probably be ancillary, like how the massive investment in SDI gave us the Clementine lunar mission. Good stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billsfanmiami(oh) Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Shielding and redundancy. I suspect the radiation risk is lower in the interstellar medium than it is in a stellar neighborhood - cosmic rays are much more energetic than stellar (i.e. solar) radiation, but there's also far fewer of them. I'm not interested enough in that problem to actually do the calculation, though. The biggest handicap to the project is the speed of the probe - not getting it fast enough to get there, but keeping it slow enough to collect meaningful data. They're talking about 20 years to Alpha Centauri, which is about 4 light years away. If you don't have a way to slow the probe down at the destination (hint: you don't. The fuel you'd need for that delta-V is mass-prohibitive just to get off the earth, never mind carry to Alpha Centauri), you send it screaming through the system at a minimum of a fifth of the speed of light. That's fast enough to cross our entire solar system in two days. That may seem like a lot...but consider New Horizons: it had a 22-hour flyby dedicated solely to data collection (basically, went into an automatic mode and collected and stored everything it could for later transmission.) For this plan, we're talking about a data collection window a little more than twice as long for an entire solar system. What's more, that's for an entire solar system where we don't know where anything is. You can't even do the sort of mission planning it took to pull of the New Horizons mission, because you can't predict where to point the cameras. (And you can't use any sort of command guidance because, y'know, any command you send takes four years to get there.) It's analogous to me asking you to drive down a road at 300mph and read the house numbers off mailboxes, when we don't even know if there's any mailboxes on the road. And if I want to ask you to do something different while you're driving, I have to mail you a letter. It's a ridiculous engineering challenge. Probably not insoluble...but nearly so. The biggest benefit of a program like this would probably be ancillary, like how the massive investment in SDI gave us the Clementine lunar mission. Thanks. Obviously seemed like a mind blowingly difficult thing to do. But I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will figure it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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